What the Wind Knows(38)
“You were born in Ireland, yes? You’ve lived here all your life. You know you must have shawls!”
Beatrice brought me a long wool coat and a matching charcoal hat decorated with a spray of black roses and a black silk ribbon. She called it a cloche hat. Instead of the stiff circular brim and round dome of the straw hat, the cloche hat was snug and flared around my face coquettishly, following the line of my head. I loved it and left it on while I moved on to the next thing.
I started making a pile. In addition to the underthings and clothes, I would need four pairs of stockings, a pair of brown kid pumps, a pair of medium-heeled black T-strap shoes, and a pair of black boots for the colder months. I could also use Anne’s old boots for long walks or chores. I mentally balked at the thought of chores, wondering what kind of chores a woman in 1921 was typically tasked with. Thomas had servants, but he’d said he wanted me to assist him with his patients. I reassured myself that the boots would suffice for that as well.
I’d been keeping a tally in my head—stockings four for a pound, shoes and shawls three pounds apiece. The cotton dresses were five pounds each, the boots and the linen dresses were seven, the chemises and knickers were a pound apiece, and the skirt was four. The blouses were two and a half pounds, the corset a little more, the hats as much as the cotton dresses, and the wool coat fifteen pounds all by itself. I had to be getting close to ninety pounds, and I still needed to buy toiletries.
“You need a dress or two for parties. The doctor is often invited to the homes of the well-to-do,” Beatrice insisted, a frown curving between her brows. “And do you have jewelry? We have some beautiful costume jewelry that looks almost real.”
I showed her my ring and earrings and indicated that was the extent of it. She nodded, biting her lip.
“You also need a handbag. But that can wait, I suppose. When winter comes, you’ll wish you had another wool suit,” she added, eyeing the ugly, outdated suit I’d worn coming into the department store. “That’s not the . . . loveliest . . . suit I’ve ever seen. But it will be warm.”
“I won’t be going to any parties with the doctor,” I protested. “And this suit will have to do. I’ll have my shawls and my coat. I’ll be fine.”
She sighed as if she’d failed me but nodded her assent. “All right. I’ll have your purchases wrapped and boxed up while you finish dressing.”
26 October 1920
Black and Tans and Auxiliaries—forces pumped into Ireland from Great Britain—are everywhere, and they don’t seem to answer to anyone. Barbed wire and barricades, armoured vehicles, and soldiers with fixed bayonets patrolling the streets are all commonplace now. It’s quieter in Dromahair than in Dublin, but we still feel it here. All of Ireland is feeling it. In little Balbriggan, just last month, the Tans and the Auxies set half the town on fire. Homes, businesses, factories, and whole sections of town were burned to the ground. Crown forces said it was a reprisal for the death of two Tans, but the reprisals are always excessive and are always completely indiscriminate. They want to break us. So many of us are already broken.
This past April, the Mountjoy jail was full of Sinn Féin members whose only crime was political association. The political prisoners were mixed in among the regular criminals, and in protest of their incarceration, several of them began a hunger strike. In 1917, a political prisoner, a member of the IRB, went on strike and was force-fed. The brutal way in which he was “fed” cost him his life. As the crowds outside Mountjoy Prison grew, the national attention grew as well, until Prime Minister Lloyd George, still feeling the sting of worldwide outrage from the hunger strike of 1917, capitulated to their demands, gave the men prisoner-of-war status, and moved them to the hospital to recover. I was able to see them at the Mater Hospital in an official capacity, as a medical representative appointed by Lord French himself. I volunteered. The men were weak and thin, but it was a battle won, and they all knew it.
The Dáil, Ireland’s newly formed government made up of the elected leaders who refused to take their seats at Westminster, has been outlawed by the British administration. Mick and the other councilmembers—those who aren’t in jail—have continued to carry on in secret, establishing a working government and doing their best to create a system under which an independent Ireland can function. But local mayors, officials, and judges who work in a more public capacity can’t hide as easily as the Dáil officials can. One by one, they have been arrested or murdered. The lord mayor of Cork, Thomas MacCurtain, was shot in his house and his elected replacement, Terence MacSwiney, was arrested during a raid on Cork City Hall not too long after he took office. Mayor MacSwiney, along with the ten men he was arrested with, decided to go on a hunger strike to denounce the continued unlawful imprisonment of public officials. Their strike, just like the one in April, has attracted national attention. But not because it ended well. Terence MacSwiney died yesterday in England at a Brixton jail, seventy-four days after he began his hunger strike.
Every day it’s another terrible story, another unforgiveable event. The whole country is under immense strain, yet there is an odd hopefulness mixed with the fear. It’s as if all of Ireland is coming awake and our eyes are fixed on the same horizon.
T. S.
10
THE THREE BEGGARS